The ability to respect other people’s boundaries is a useful and rare skill that can make our life easier in many ways.
“When I was fifteen years old, a book boom began in the country: books began to be sold everywhere, even in cigarette stalls. All filled with detective stories and adventure novels. In one of them I met this phrase, and it imprinted in my memory. Since then, I have been doing just that. Both in private life and in public. I know many families where a wife or husband, out of simple curiosity, read the personal letters of their half and always found compromising evidence. I’m not even talking about evidence of treason; for example, a husband shared some feelings about his wife with a friend. And it was definitely better for the wife not to know. And then there was a huge scandal.
In short, I never stick my nose anywhere. And so it is in public life. By virtue of my profession, I often find myself in the public eye, and many people I don’t know care about me. Not only wonderful and decent. Therefore, in order to live a long life without a nervous breakdown, I do not pay attention to who and what writes about me, who somewhere on the Web casually talks about my cinema. I’m not interested and I’m not looking for this knowledge. In general, «I do not put my ear to the keyhole.»
* Walter Scott, English writer, founder of the historical novel genre. Phrase from the novel «Rob Roy» (AST, 2005).